The French influence

English also has many similarities with Romance languages, whose origin is Latin. The words below came to England with the French-speaking Normans. Notice that the words are associated with power: Norman French was used as the language of government. Words of Latin origin are usually longer than words of Germanic origin and often have a more formal meaning in English than in the original Romance language.

Norman French words did not enter English immediately. When the Normans invaded in 1066, ordinary people still spoke Old English.

Imagine a Norman feast. The English would look after the animals and cook the meat, still calling the animals by their Old English names. The Normans, when they saw the cooked meat arrive at the table, would use French ones. This explains why the English language now has different words for animals and meats.

In the fourteenth century, a new form of English was used: Middle English, which was Old English enriched by thousands of French words. The fourteenth-century poet, Chaucer, wrote in Middle English.

Michael Vaughan-Rees, Geraldine Sweeney, Picot Cassidy: In Britain. 21st Century Edition, Cornelsen Verlag, 2000, page 12

Vocabulary